People were commenting that this set reminded them of time spiral, and I think that two main reasons contribute to that: As you said, this set kinda rubs against the NWO style that we've been dealing with for the past few years (and which, honestly, seems to have ramped up significantly after Khans) where complexity and strange mechanics have been toned down, and also because the damn set is a nostalgia trip.
I honestly like all the strange and almost random legendaries coming around. It reminds me of Legends... if they actually knew how to design legends at the time.